Title: SpaceWritten

by: Glynis Mitchell

Date saw the show: July 26, 2007 (World Premiere)
Place saw the show: Kansas City, Missouri, Fringe Festival
Company: Gaffe Tape and Glitter
Principal Leads: Glynis Mitchell, Patricia Rusconi
Stage Director: Patricia Rusconi

3 ½ Stars

Reviewed by: Deborah Ground Buckner

The 2007 Kansas City Fringe Festival featured the world premiere of Space, by Glynis Mitchell. Ms. Mitchell is an actor, writer and performance poet based in Seattle, Washington. She is part of the artistic leadership of the award-winning Balagan Theatre.

The program notes state the play is “a Buddhist parable of Samara, the cycle of rebirth.” As Ms. Mitchell explained further, it is an examination of “the psychological things that keep arising in our lives.” Growing up with a family of scientists, Ms. Mitchell has always been interested in science and classic science fiction, such as The Day the Earth Stood Still. Great science fiction presents “a psychological situation in a new context,” Ms. Mitchell says, and that is what she wanted to do with her play, Space.

She has succeeded. With a bare stage and only two performers (Glynis Mitchell and Patricia Rusconi—the two have been friends since meeting at college and transferring to The American Musical and Dramatic Academy and are enjoying this chance to work together), Space provides a study in both relationships and isolation. There are eight short scenes. The action begins violently as a woman is taken captive, bound and blindfolded, her captor holding a gun and demanding to know how she got on the ship. This scenario continues, broken by alternating scenes of flashbacks showing different stages of the captor's life.

We first see the captor as a little girl, listening as her mother explains they will be leaving soon for a space colony. The little girl is excited and tells of a friend whose uncle traveled in space for months and saw “a lady in space.” The mother assures the girl there is nothing out there, but sometimes “being lonely can make you very sick” and cause one to imagine things. There is no god, nothing in space. All we have is ourselves.

Further action between the captor and captive reveals the captor is the captain of a space ship. The captive asks what she does. “I fly—just fly.” The captain has no life stories to tell, although the captive protests, “Everybody has stories—we're made of stories.” “I fly to be left alone.”

Another flashback reveals the captain and a young person on her first space flight. There are 85 people aboard the craft, paid customers flying to a space colony when a malfunction threatens the lives of all on board. The young crew member is frightened, but the captain remains stoic, saying, “Life is short. Everyone dies.”

The captain reveals to the captive all the people aboard the ship died; the captain had activated a device that spilled them all out into space. The captive reaches out to the captain, saying she wants to help. The captain repeats the words her mother spoke long ago, “Sometimes when people are lonely, they tell themselves stories,” insisting the captive leave her alone, then fires the gun. In Epilogue, the captain tells the audience, “I am alone.”

Through the captain, the audience is shown the deliberate choices made to live in loneliness and isolation, to ignore the offer of help that comes from somewhere out there, whether in the form of the “lady in space,” God, or a friend. The message is well presented, giving impetus to the audience members to examine their own life cycles and, perhaps, find a way to change.

Space is next bound for a workshop in Seattle and then performance at the Bumbershoot, one of the West Coast's biggest arts festivals. This is a play with great promise, likely to see more stagings in the future.